Jars
by FishSlayer
Summary: I heard screaming, horrible tortured howling and my head was killing me. It took a while, but I noticed the screaming was my own.


It was always dark in my cell. I could see my chained and manacled hand in front of my face, and the floor I sat hunched over. But when I looked to my surroundings, only pitch black darkness. I couldn't move far in my chains, so there was no way to tell how large the room was. Perhaps I was somewhere in the Abyss. It seemed dark enough around me. It was comforting, the dark.

The first time I was brought a meal, I could see how far the doorway was, and realized my cell was not so endless after all. I saw light and flame again, each time they came. That had its own comfort, despite my captors.

Then they brought me out. It took some time for my eyes to adjust to the change, and the guard taking me kept shoving impatiently as I stumbled along. I had to wonder what they finally had for me after all this time. Nothing had ever been explained. I could hardly remember being ambushed and captured on the roadside, back when I was free. I had just been…a wanderer. I think. Or maybe I was a traveling pyromancer. Or a bandit. It's hard to remember. Anything from The Before is hard to remember. Trying makes my head hurt.

All of a sudden I stumbled into a small room with several bright torches on the walls. One particularly large light source hung from an iron chandelier just above the table. A dark, silhouetted man was there.

"Hello, sir. You are about to be a part of progress in the search for a cure to this undead curse that plagues our world. I'd appreciate your cooperation." He grinned broadly.

Lord Aldia.

He nodded to my guard as he pulled on a pair of strange, stained gloves. I was forced to lay flat on the table top, completely bare. The lights were still so bright…they hurt my head. I wanted to try to remember, try to remember The Before, and it hurt. I clutched at my face, but my arms and legs were soon bound to the table.

"Please do not struggle. Think of this as an honor." The lord said, pulling up a small table littered with silvery, glinting instruments.

I couldn't pull my gaze from the shining steel he held in both hands and brought closer and closer to my flesh. My mind began tormenting me with images I couldn't place or understand. I saw an old woman in a red cloak, smiling at me. A fierce mercenary with a roaring bear helm, carving through a charred and bloody field. A grim king clad in black plate and fur. I saw a tall, sad queen with golden hair, her back to me. Women, men, beasts…fighting and killing each other and hollowing all the same.

I heard screaming, horrible tortured howling and my head was killing me. It took a while, but I noticed the screaming was my own. I was beating my free head against the table because it hurt, it hurt and though I couldn't feel the knife slicing into my chest I heard "Restrain the head, damn you."

Now I couldn't move, I couldn't move at all and it hurt my head hurt so badly and nothing could fix it, so I screamed. I screamed until I couldn't scream anymore and my head _hurt_ even after all I could see was the darkness again. This time, I really was in the Abyss, wasn't I? And the only comforting thing about it was that my head didn't hurt anymore.

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><p>Now nothing hurts. I don't see images I know nothing about, I don't care. I see humans, like I used to be, passing on their journey to fight and struggle uselessly until this place claims them.<p>

I see them, and I want them to come closer, closer so we can reach them, so I giggle and everyone else in here with me does too. Black, ethereal smoke rises from the top of our clay home and someone gets too close.

They're trapped by a beast and they're close enough. After a struggle, they flop to the ground and their skin goes green and their shining eyes turn milky, and when they get up to wander and moan, we giggle. We laugh. And we wait.

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Just to let you know I'm aware that there isn't exactly any Abyss in Dark Souls 2, but that you can think of the protagonist in this as knowing of it from stories and tales. There are remnants of the first game here and there, anyway.<strong> **If you have questions about what this was about, feel free to ask. **


End file.
